Forging new consensus on immigration

By his optimism and his trying to plant seeds of change, you would think Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is our own Johnny Appleseed.

Last Wednesday, Shurtleff hosted a conference, "The Mountain West summit: Forging a New Consensus on Immigrants and America." Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho discussed immigration and how to "begin to develop a common understanding of the value of immigration to the Mountain West and America." Big dream; but big dreams always start with small seeds spread by a few good people.

And, it was not surprising that it took an outsider to remind us of the virtues of how Westerners view life. National columnist Ruben Navarette, a keynote speaker at the conference, pointed out the differences of the Rust Belt States and the Mountain States. The difference — vastness — not in geography, rather in possibilities. Rust Belt States spend time talking about problems and limitations; Westerners talk about possibilities — not a smaller pie, rather an expanding one.

He also said that only in Utah did he find himself crying with others while discussing the summit the night before at a dinner with conference organizers. Without saying it, he was expressing the most fundamental belief in the Utah Compact, the human approach to immigration that "the way we treat immigrants will say more about us as a free society and less about our immigrant neighbors."

It was refreshing to see people coming together to talk about the benefits and challenges we face during hard times and to build upon them, rather than, as Navarette pointed out, those who think of limited resources; that if an immigrant gets a job, "it's food off my table," and "he can't win without me failing." Westerners think about the vastness of resources and opportunities.

An outsider, like Navarrete, helps us see the disconnect between the values Utahns live and what state political leaders practice. The Utah Compact is a great example and what Shurtleff is now trying to tout nationwide to fix our national immigration policies. While Utah lawmakers say they embrace those values, the policies they advance are the opposite. Utah lawmakers passed SB97 in 2008 to study the impact of immigration, including "the benefits of illegal immigrants to the state." Good public policy requires examining all sides of an issue. However, the study on benefits was never done either by the Legislature or the governor.